Also Recommended: Time of Eve, NieA_7, Nausicaa, or anything else that fills this reviewer with happiness rather than cold emptiness.

Notes: Based on the manga by Higayashi Meme. The "Do" present in the full title is the first term in the pedagogical technique of solfege, which is used to teach sight-singing and has very little to do with anything in the series.

Rating:

Recorder and Randsell (Season 1)

Synopsis

The audience is introduced to Atsumi, a high-school aged girl with the body of a kindergartener and her elementary-school aged brother, Atsushi, who has the appearance of an adult man. Pedophilic jokes, crappy music, and utterances of "no...please not this again" from the audience ensue.

Review

No, just so that you all know, Recorder and Randsell really has nothing to do with either recorders or backpacks. Its purpose is to generate a reaction from those who find it funny to watch a "child" with the body of the grown man hold hands with his female "schoolmates" and subsequently be beat to pieces by policemen for "suspicious behavior", or who will laugh at the idea of his poor confused figure appearing on the doorsteps of said female friends to "play", to the horror of their (understandably) terrified mothers. You will find this show to be worth your time if you want to see his neotenic older sister be ogled at by a creepy low-life "friend of the family", and you will find this to be an engaging and enjoyable show if you think that watching a character with the visible appearance of a grown man unfold his trench coat as if to, shall we say, "expose himself before his peers" is the pinnacle of entertainment. And if none of these gimmicks interest you, the 39 minutes that comprise this pointless and joyless little bit of otakubait will better be spent finishing your problem set for chemistry, taking your poodle on a stroll, or perhaps, if you feel inclined to procrastinate, spending your time with an episode of a worthwhile series such as Texhnolyze, Cowboy Bebop, or Spice and Wolf. For as short as three minutes are, thirteen three minute episodes add up to lost time, time that I imagine is precious to you, and time that I hope I, as a reviewer, will prevent you from wasting.

Let's get some things out of the way. No, the discrepancy between the characters' appearances and their actual ages does not generate any interesting commentary: it is a means to create pedophilic jokes. No, the "characters" do not become at all interesting: rather than full-fledged human beings of any sort, they are simply agents placed to generate pedophilic jokes. No, the introduction of new characters neither changes the dynamic of the show nor makes it interesting: we simply get pedophilic jokes making use of Atsushi's well-endowed teacher and the aforementioned pedophile friend (who, for some bizarre reason, is never shown above the neck) instead of the "children" themselves. And no, the show's "technical achievements" do absolutely nothing to distract one from the nature of its "humor": of what little there is to see, the art is unremarkable, the animation shoddy and akin to something you'd see in a flash animation, and the musical "score" the worst possible collection of synthy blips and MIDI files a drop-out from an "Introduction to Video Game Music" course could ever sum up. Last of all, if this spade of evidence isn't enough to convince you not to watch this show, I will allow the final lines to speak for themselves:

And that, folks, is it. Life is full of possibilities, and some of those possibilities are simply not meant to be explored.

I despair for the fact that drivel such as this is produced, that it is distributed while better shows languish in obscurity, and that it sold well enough to garner interest in a second season. Moving on, please.... — Nicoletta Christina Browne

Recommended Audience: If anything in this series can be said to be "appropriate", there is at least neither anything explicitly sexual beyond some eyeroll-inducing fan service. Giving the show such a distinction, however, is like praising Charles Manson for limiting his "activities" to adults, and ultimately irrelevant.